Note: I did the Silly Sunday thing on Saturday. If you’re unhappy, I will be delighted to refund your money;)

Warrior Woman is a client who has become a friend. She’s quite gifted psychically herself, but needs some guidance on boundaries. For instance, it isn’t nice to read minds. I do not do it. Not because I can’t, but for the same reason that I wouldn’t read your mail. Because it’s rude.

Warrior Woman likes to check up on her friends to see how they are doing. Instead of picking up the phone, or clicking on her email client, she likes to do what she calls “crawling through their minds” to see what they are up to.

I can always tell when somebody is trying to get into my mind. It is always accompanied by a physical sensation, something like a tingling, but not quite, along my scalp. I immediately put up my shields when this happens. I figure anyone who crosses that boundary line certainly does not belong there.

Shortly after Warrior Woman’s first reading, I felt the crawling through my brain sensation, and put up my guards. When she phoned for her next appointment, I told her that I had felt her being intrusive, and I would not work with her unless she respected my boundaries. It’s too much freaking work to have to keep your shields up whenever someone wants to trip through your tulips.

She apologized and said she did it so routinely with her friends that it had become automatic with her. I gave her a verbal spanking and confirmed the appointment. She brought me a prezzie to demonstrate her remorse. Forgive and forget. Life went on.

She’s a great cook, and we went back and forth with dinner invites. I always got the better of the deal. She has the better food. Plus, she has the coolest kitchen gadgets. And wine. There is much wine.

So Warrior Woman calls me a few weeks ago and asks if I want to attend a Jimmy Rankin concert. She has some tickets and needs a body to fill the other seat.

I have been deep in the bat cave of late, only going out for the necessities. I really like the place I live in, and nothing much outside spins my crank as much as home does. Plus, I need only wear my comfy jammies. My comfy warm, yummy jammies. With socks, no high heels. No instrument of feminine torture bra. What’s not to love?

Warrior Woman has her kitchen gadgets, but she covets my home. Can’t really blame her. It rocks. It was built about 150 years ago by a manufacturing family, and it was since an elementary school, now converted to flats. I have the best flat, where all the mansion-y grandeur still shines. The living room alone is 20′ x 40′, the dining room/office is about half that size, both panelled in old wood reminiscent of a men’s club.

So, the concert night rolls around and I drag my sad droopy butt over the pond to Jimmy’s place. I have always been partial to Canuck music, and The Rankin Family is pure down home, toe-tapping, spoon-clacking goodness.

Jimmy wrote a lot of the tunes the family played and sang, until their breakup a while back. I was kind of thinking I would get to experience some of that Rankin magic in Jimmy’s solo concert.

It was a great venue, with excellent acoustics. We had great seats.

The opening act was a cute young fellow who wrote his own material. As soon as he hit the mike, BOOM! He dropped his guitar. Didn’t bat an eye, just exclaimed “It’s still in tune!”

Wrong.

He soldiered on through the first song, then tuned the durned guitar. My ears immediately stopped bleedingwere grateful.

After about three songs, he announced an intermission before the feature act came on.

There was much admiring of all the artfully placed pretty guitars on the stage, and many technical adjustments, people coming off stage and going to the lobby, and all kinds of boring crap entertaining hijinks.

If you are not of the Canuckian persuasion, you need to be reminded that Canadians are a polite and appreciative audience. Really. I know. I’m so very proud. So this polite Canadian audience is rather subdued in the venue with the great acoustics, fixing to enjoy us a little Jimmy love.

Forty minutes later, the majority of the audience is either in a coma, or terminally programmed for politeness, because Jimmy, he hasn’t made an appearance yet.

When the golden boy finally does appear, I am steaming with the disrespect shown the audience. What does he think he is? A rock star?

How many technical adjustments and sound checks does he need? The young fella didn’t keep us waiting and he DROPPED HIS FREAKING GUITAR.

Jimmy’s guitar playing, for all those pretty guitars and many technical adjustments, sucked. Big time. And he does have a loud singing voice, but he was shouting, not singing.

I felt a scalp tingling, gave WW a psychic slap, and figured I had kept her out.

I looked at Warrior Woman and she spoke the words that were running through my mind: “I wonder what drugs he is high on?”

Mind intrusion aside, I was pretty sure that we both thought he was zonked, explaining the delays and the craptastical lacklustre performance.

A few bars into the second song, and we knew we were not in for a good experience, so we looked at each other with the “scramoose” gesture, and out we went.

All I could think was “AND I PUT A BRA ON FOR THIS?”

Yes, that is really what it boils down to. If I am going to endure the instrument of feminine torture, then there had best be some mighty fine entertainment in it for me.

Jimmy, I think I know why The Rankin Family Band broke up. Your sisters were tired of your drug addicted arse unprofessional behaviour.